(meteorobs) Quadrantids Pictures and Videos

[Chris Peterson]

Hi Mike-

That camera is about 1/10 as sensitive to meteors as a Watec, Mintron, 
or Supercircuits B&W camera with a Rainbow lens, and from what I've seen 
playing with handyavi, the software misses a lot of events that would be 
caught by programs designed specifically for meteor detection, and not 
just motion capture.

I had 70 meteors (68 Quadrantids) on my setup the morning of Jan 4, 
http://www.cloudbait.com/science/quadrantid2012.html, under very dark 
skies. So I'd expect your camera to have only caught a handful, which is 
consistent with your catching none at all given that you're still trying 
to figure out the software. I'm assuming you weren't capturing the 
signal in an integration mode, where frames are combined to simulate 
longer exposures. That will really knock down your sensitivity to 
meteors- for the same reason that DSLRs are fairly insensitive to them. 
The ideal exposure time to catch meteors is right around 1/30 second- 
much longer, and sky background fogs the path.

The Orion product isn't really a meteor camera, but rather a fireball 
camera, and at least for me, this shower didn't produce as many bright 
events as many other showers. That's been my experience with the 
Quadrantids in general- it seems to produce meteors of somewhat uniform 
brightness.

Chris


*******************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

On 1/5/2012 7:23 AM, Mike Hankey wrote:
> Jim,
>
> Its orion's commercial allsky camera.
>
> http://www.telescope.com/Astrophotography/Astrophotography-Cameras/Orion-StarShoot-AllSky-Camera/c/4/sc/58/p/100319.uts
>
> its a little expensive,  but a pretty nice package / setup overall. It
> uses handyavi software. I'm still working through a few operational
> issues with the software.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Mike
>